The First Cut Is The Deepest
by Insideimfeelindirty
Summary: It's been one week since her whole world changed suddenly and irrevocably. It's been one week since the world made any sense and it's been one week since she knew herself. Set after the end of season 6, April & Jackson struggle with the loss of their friends and the beginning of a new friendship.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: so this is set at the end of season 6 going into season 7, but not all the references to the show are a 100% accurate. This is also going to be pretty dark and miserable, but I'm going somewhere so just hang on. As always, I'd love to know your thoughts.**

**And of course, I own none of the characters.**

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**TRIGGER WARNING: This story deals with some heavy issues regarding depression and PTSD, including detailed ****descriptions of self-harm. **

**Please take care of yourselves and proceed with caution.**

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It's been one week since the last time she was here, one week since she has been inside her flat, one week since her whole world changed suddenly and irrevocably. She's a doctor, a surgeon, and everyday she is up close and personal with brutality and trauma and bad things happening to good people, and she is used to blood, lots of it, both human and pig. But this blood doesn't wash off, it's stuck to her, staining her hands and clothes, and this brutality happened to her, the bad things happened to her good people. It's been one week since she tripped over her best friend lying in a pool of her own blood, eyes vacant, warmth leaving her body. It's been one week since she ran into a situation she couldn't see clearly, since Chief Shepherd was shot right in front of her, eyes warning her off as he fell to the ground. It's been one week since a pair of cold blue eyes and a cold black gun stared down at her, since she pleaded for her life and ran for it too. It's been one week since she treated Dr Hunt's gunshot wound while Meredith miscarried next to her. It's been one week since the world made any sense and it's been one week since she knew herself.

She starts packing up her belongings, shoving books and clothes randomly into cartons, not bothering to pack neatly as she normally would. She drags the heavy boxes down to her car, filling it up with her chaotic mess of worldly goods. All the things she has carefully selected, things that have sentimental value, things she has saved up for - it all seems irrelevant and pointless and worthless. The final item of clothing in her wardrobe is the only thing that gets special treatment, her stiff black suit that only gets used for funerals and job interviews hanging there like a token of every dead relative and disappointment she's ever had. She carefully carries it down to the car, laying it flat on the back seat, she has to wear it tomorrow, and the day after. She takes a deep breath and straightens herself before she heads up the stairs again, preparing herself for the real task.

Reed's room is just as she left it, bed unmade, clothes on the floor, dirty dishes by the door, leaving behind a mess she fully expected to return to. This time she is more careful, folding clothes meticulously, labelling boxes, wrapping breakables in bubble wrap. She is packing boxes that will not be opened again for a long time, destined to sit for years in a garage until the time is ripe to reopen painful wounds again. She is packing away physical remainders of a life that is lost forever, lightening the load for a set of inconsolable parents who have just lost a child. She's kept it together so far, stemming the tide of tears that has been streaming incessantly from her eyes for the past week, but the sight of Reed's half-open make up bag stops her in her tracks. On the dresser in front of her a blunt eyeliner has been casually discarded, a blusher compact is open, brush resting on top at a funny angle, a tub of hair gel is missing a lid. She runs her fingers over them, the last things Reed touched before she left the flat they shared for the last time, fresh tears flowing from her eyes, burning her chest and blocking her throat. The mundane becomes meaningful, everyday items become precious when the person that gave them significance no longer can. She carefully packs up the make up bag, clutching it to her sobbing chest as she closes the door to the empty apartment for a final time.

She drags her boxes up the stairs to her new room, in this big unfamiliar house that has served as a refuge for the past week. They huddled together here, out of necessity, out of terror. No one wants to be alone, everyone wants to be able to see each other as a reminder that they have survived, they are still here. She has spent the last week doing the only things that made any sense, cooking and cleaning obsessively. Everything she cooks is heavy and comforting, full of cream and cheese and sedatives. Yesterday Jackson ate the whole cheese lid off a lasagna, bloodshot eyes staring silently into the table the whole time, as Cristina sat next to him, noticing but not saying a word about it, lost in her own thoughts. Lexie was admitted to psych a couple of days ago after Dr Sloan insisted, leaving Meredith to alternate her time between visiting her boyfriend and her sister in hospital. Alex was released earlier this morning, but no one has seen him since he climbed the stairs and shut the door to his room. No one says it but they all know neither of them are ok, that they are all far from being ok.

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The church is hot and humid, a sea of black filling every seat, mourners lining up against the walls and the entrance. The dramatic and sudden loss of a young life has attracted far more spectators than any other funeral she has attended, as if the longer you live the less interesting your death becomes, the fewer people you have left to find it shocking and tragic. They are asked to pray and she bows her head dutifully, moving her lips silently and folding her hands in her lap. She prays out of habit, finding no comfort in the words that she has grown up believing are supposed to hold her together in a situation exactly like this. The last time she prayed, really prayed, she was hiding under Chief Shepherd's desk, hands stained with Reed's blood, knuckles turning white as she begged in vain for the nightmare to end, for her friends to be safe, for it all to make sense. She wonders at His timing, leaving her at the time she needs Him the most, severing lines of trust between them, flattening her with His sadistic and graceless will. She wonders how hope and belief has become so much harder than despair and uncertainty, if He gathers how deep her doubt and loss of faith runs. She prays anyway, hoping the action will somehow force the meaning through.

The priest launches into his eulogy, listing all of Reed's accomplishments, describing her character, reeling off the well-meaning anecdotes that have been fed to him, and the words ring hollow in her ears. She glances down to her lap, where a hand finds hers, long brown fingers wrapping around her pale, clammy ones. It already feels familiar, Jackson's hand in hers, where it has ended up countless times during the past week, though it still feels new. Their hands just seem to find each other automatically now, silently comforting her, stemming the urge to run out of the church screaming. She glances around the crowd, no longer paying any attention to the priest, recognising the solemn faces of her colleagues, the broken shadow of a woman that is Reed's mother, eyes finally resting on Meredith and Cristina leaning against each other, hands clasped together tightly. They remind her that everyone has that one friend they'd choose over anyone, to talk to, to cry with, whatever, the one that's always your first choice. Her stomach runs cold when she realises she is not that friend to anyone anymore.

She shuts the door to her room, locking the door behind her, exhausted from crying and trying not to cry. She is exhausted from spending the day mumbling thank yous and nodding in agreement with half-truths about how Reed was such a lovely girl or how she was too young to die, when the truth is she was a hard ass and her dying would have been no less painful if she had been 95 and toothless. The day has passed her by in a blur, Jackson's hand constantly steadying her as she tried to convince people she is not catatonic, still physically alive. It doesn't feel like she is though, alive, that is. Her blood is still circulating around her veins, her brain still able to force her body to move, her synapses still firing, but she feels nothing but numb, because it is easier than feeling the raw agony that is lingering underneath. She slowly peels out of her stiff suit, hanging it up ready to repeat the performance tomorrow.

She lost her little red note book during the chaos of the shooting, the little book she used as a crutch to get her through her intern year and her first attempt at residency during the merger. In a way she's glad it's gone, one less reminder of the insignificance of her problems before her problems were big enough to make the national news, big enough to land her in lengthy interviews with the police. She understands from the way the police officers ask her that she somehow accelerated the situation that almost killed Chief Shepherd, she understands from the way Meredith looks at her sometimes, she understand from the things Cristina doesn't tell her. Her problems now warrant a much bigger book, black this time. This book is already filling up with ramblings she is afraid to express out loud, thoughts so dark and disconnected she would probably end up in psych right next to Lexie if someone found them. Here she dispels the lies she told the gunman, ripping her own defence to pieces. _She hasn't done anything yet_, she's done too much, getting her boss shot in front of his pregnant wife. _She hasn't finished yet_, truth is she hasn't even started and now she's not sure she wants to. _She hasn't been loved yet_, she doesn't know that she ever will be, that she could ever welcome it. She keeps her pain between herself and the black book, grasping at her anger and loneliness between the lines of the paper, burying her feelings in ink so numbness is all she is left with when she leaves her room. She is changed into something she never meant to be, transformed into a person she doesn't recognise, her biggest and unbeatable problem is now her. She is not herself anymore, and she doesn't know how to be. Exhaustion grips her bones, and she welcomes it, the chaos quieting down in her head, oblivion seeping in as dreamless sleep finds her.

* * *

Returning to work is a blessing, a distraction from feeling anything, an excuse to focus on something physical. It's a chance for her to give an appearance of a well-functioning human, someone in control, someone who deserved to be spared. She has to contend with stares and whispers, but the feeling of pity and intrigue is better than anything she grants herself, easier to bear than the judgement she holds over her own head. The others all feel it too, avoiding the large communal spaces of the hospital in favour of lunch breaks in the deserted hallways of the basement. Lexie is back from her spell in hospital, incredulous at her own failure to withstand her violent emotions, as if a near death experience isn't supposed to throw you off, as if it is a weakness to feel too much. On the opposite side of the scale is Alex, proudly using the bullet in his chest as a pick up line, burying any sign of emotion in bravado. They still don't talk about the fact that neither of them are ok, measuring relative degrees of healing in how quickly you can get cleared for surgery. She gets cleared without problems, crying easily in front of Dr Perkins, somehow finding words that convince him she is stable.

She feels stable as she assists Dr Shepherd later that day, even as their patient is gripped with all-consuming, raw pain. She feels rock solid as she helps calm him down, administering sedatives to the boy that has just had his skull split in half, and as Dr Shepherd's words and her sedatives take hold, she calms down with him. She is calmed by the display of physical pain, put at ease by a situation she can understand. It is a solid proof of life, this struggle that her patient is dealing with, and it gives her more hope than her constant attempts at prayer that has no recipient.

She feels stable as she puts her dress on that evening, layering water-proof mascara on her lashes. She feels rock solid as she walks down the stairs to face the wedding party going on in the living room. She is calmed as her hand once again finds Jackson's, leaning against him as Cristina walks up the improvised aisle together with Meredith. She is relieved as tears spill out of her eyes yet again, because she always cries at weddings, and she wasn't sure she was still that person.

She feels stable as she grips a scalpel in her hand again the next day, she feels rock solid cutting into flesh, calmed by the sight of blood flowing. Silver marks her skin and it turns red, puffing up into a swollen ridge, drops of blood beading up into a perfect dotted line. It tingles and burns at first, and then it calms down as her mind finds ease. And then her mind asks for more, so she cuts again, making fresh lines next to old ones, mapping her pain on her skin. She's in control and it's the best feeling she's had in weeks. She dabs the red lines on her legs with tissue paper before pulling up her scrub pants and slipping the thin blade into Reed's old make up bag, clutching it to her chest and breathing freely as she steps back into the residents' locker room.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: thanks for the lovely reviews guys, I know this is heart-wrenching stuff, but that seems like what I'm normally compelled to write. As with most things, it will get worse before it gets better. Please let me know what you think.**

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The nightmare is the same as the night before and the night before that and as far back as his memories of nightmares go. He's back in the hospital, clean hands inside clammy rubber gloves, blood stained scalpel in his right hand, face partially covered by a surgical mask. He raises his hands in the air, signalling truce, resignation, surrender, either of them and all of them. Steely, hard eyes burn into him, blurred face snarled behind the gleaming metal object that comes into full focus. The gun is impossibly big and impossibly close to his head, and it's all he can focus on as the hairs prick up in the back of his neck. The man is shouting incoherently, and he's trying to catch his meaning, knowing he is missing vital information. He starts to sweat as he struggles to find meaning behind the words that sound like they are coming from under water, and the longer he takes to understand the angrier the man gets and the closer the gun gets. Suddenly a long electronic sound pierces the picture, the perpetual signifier of flat lining, and he is instantly reminded that he is supposed to be operating. The demonic gunman is gone as he scrambles to save the life ebbing out in front of him, but everything he attempts is futile and the open cavity fills up with blood. His breath is sweet as he pants heavily into his mask, trying to focus his blinking eyes on finding the leak, but he is too late, the blood keeps coming. It spills over, soaking the light blue cloth covering the patient, dripping heavily on the floor and filling up his shoes. He tries to stem the flow, frantically grabbing lap pads, but he is all alone and it's too late, and its only now he looks at the patient's face and realises it's Charles lying there, bleeding into his shoes. He wakes up soaked in sweat, gasping for air, noting that the alarm clock next to his bed is exactly 4.15 am, same as every other night his memory can stretch to.

He pads down the stairs, exhausted and bleary-eyed. Exhausted from lack of sleep, exhausted from lack of rest from his own mind. April is in the kitchen, cleaning manically as usual, as she has been every time he comes down to the kitchen to get some water, which he has been doing every night for the last four weeks at exactly the same time. He doesn't ask why she is up at all hours, so she doesn't ask him either, they both know why and neither of them want to talk about it. She simply hands him a glass of cold water which was waiting by the sink for him as he entered the room. He sits down at the kitchen table watching her busy herself, she barely acknowledges his presence apart from a small comforting squeeze to his arm. She walks, she tidies, she cooks, she cleans, she is there, but at the same time she isn't. He recognises her absent presence, sees in her what others must see in him, that a part of her is elsewhere forever, a piece of who she is missing.

Nights are the worst. During the day he can find distractions, keep his mind from slipping back into now familiar patterns. He lies back on his bed, closing his eyes and willing sleep to find him fast. If it were up to his knackered body he'd be asleep in an instant, but his brain won't stop churning, won't stop sending him images of the gun pointed at him, won't stop asking him why he couldn't save his best friend. He goes over the same argument each and every night, he _knows_ he was on a different floor, he _knows _he had no way of knowing what had happened to Charles, he _knows_ Bailey did everything she could for him. Yet, his brain refuses to let it sink in, refuses to accept he couldn't have saved the one life that mattered the most to him that day, refuses to let him rest. Every night he lies to himself, the filthiest kinds of lies, he tells himself he could have, should have, would have saved Charles, conjuring up frighteningly plausible ways he could have changed the outcome of that day. Every night he waits for sleep to take him, eventually succumbing to a darkness he cannot close his eyes to.

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Daytime is easier, there are patients he can actually save, outcomes he can alter, lives he can improve. Surgery is still slightly nerve-racking, though it's fine as long as he's not operating with Cristina or operating in OR 5. The attendings know and understand, and though he hates any form of special treatment, for this he is willing to make an exception. Daytime is easier because his problems aren't the only ones occupying his mind, other people's problems seep in and push his own down, muting them, fading his into a background hum. What's difficult about daytime is the obvious void in his everyday existence, no Charles to banter with in the locker room, no Charles to eat unhealthy lunches with whilst discussing unhealthy obsessions over coworkers, no Charles to fight for cool surgeries. No Reed to berate them for being childish either. Just a new living situation with little banter, new somber lunch routines, new friends who are too polite or too fragile to fight him for surgeries.

His phone buzzes aggressively in his pocket, and he sighs heavily expecting it to be his mother checking up on him again.

"Are you sure you're ok?"

The question is always the same, and he always assures her that he is fine, but she's never convinced by his performance. He invariably picks up anyway, sympathetic to the fact that she is also freaked out by his brush with death. He pulls the phone out from his pocket and his heart sinks as he realises it's worse than his mother calling, it's Charles' mother calling. This is a new, unsettling habit of hers, calling him once or twice a week without much to say. She asks him a few questions about the hospital, about April, if he's spoken to Reed's mother, any odd bits of small talk she can muster up, before she launches into the worst question of them all.

"Why?"

She sobs into the phone as she says it, the same way she has every time she's called him. The 'why' could mean any number of things. Why did a fairly uncomplicated gunshot wound cost Charles his life? Why couldn't his surgeon colleagues and friends have saved him? Why him and not someone else?

"I don't know."

It's a shitty answer and he knows it, but he has nothing else to offer her, and he's sure his unsatisfactory response is the reason she keeps calling him, keeps asking him the impossible question.

He has to hit the gym after hanging up the phone, frustration mounting, brain compelling him to release endorphins. He runs frantically, his heart rate soaring quickly, ignoring the pain in his chest and legs as he continues his punishing rhythm. He's got his own 'whys' to contend with, his own questions to which there are no satisfactory answers. Anger propels him forward, an uncontrollable, burning feeling raging in his chest, red flashing behind his eyes, palms covered in sweat inside white-knuckled fists. His t-shirt sticks to his chest, his legs shake beneath him as he continues, but adrenaline keeps him going, keeps up the intensity as his mind rages. Bile rises in his throat unexpectedly, saliva flooding his mouth, forcing him to make a dash for the nearest trash can. His stomach contracts and purges all its miserable contents, rushing out of him and dissipating his anger with it. He gags and heaves for air, crouching over the trash can as curious eyes burn into him.

"You ok, man?"

He doesn't lift his head to see who the curious voice belongs to, but he nods his head and gives the voice a thumbs up, even though he's really not ok. His chest stings and his breathing is laboured when he eventually straightens up, wiping his mouth and his eyes. The vomiting has brought on tears that he hasn't been able to conjure up for neither Charles nor Reed, but it's short-lived and he shuts it down immediately. He decides he's not punished himself enough today and heads for the weights room, there is nothing left inside to throw up in any case.

* * *

He wakes up at 4.15 am, right on schedule. His body is hurting from the beating he gave it in the gym earlier, his head hurting from everything he has been trying to suppress. A soft knock on his door startles him, but it doesn't take him long to figure out who the person on the other side must be. He lets April in, water glass in hand, not a trace of sympathy in her expression, just undiluted understanding and acceptance. He doesn't have to put on a performance around her, she knows he is just as ok as she is, which is not at all, not in the slightest. She squeezes his arm like she always does, reassuring him, letting him know he's not going crazy, though it feels like he is losing his mind, piece by piece, dream by dream.

"Same dream?" she asks, voice soft.

"Same dream," he confirms, rubbing his forehead.

She hugs him gently, and he hesitates. This new closeness that has been forced on them still feels unfamiliar, fragile even. Up until four weeks ago their friendship has been light and uncomplicated, mostly consisting of playful banter or shop talk. He is used to her in the context of a foursome, not a twosome, and the sharp realisation that she is all he has left weighs him down. They've been thrust together by unimaginable events, crushed by the same inconsolable grief, and though his first instinct is to keep her at arms' length, to cut his losses, she has taken place as his closest friend by virtue of her survival alone. Without realising his arms have tightened around her, squeezing her a little too hard, but to her credit she doesn't flinch, just lets him smother her.

After a while she needs to breathe and pushes back, rubbing his shoulder as if she's worried he'd take her need for oxygen as rejection. She looks terrible, faint blue shadows under her eyes, lips sore and cracked, her cheeks void of their usual plumpness. He recognises the signs of physical exhaustion in her, partly due to his professional background, mainly due to facing the same signs in the mirror every day.

"You're not sleeping either?" he asks, crossing a line. They don't usually talk about this, their nocturnal habits, neither of them willing to admit out loud that neither are doing well.

"I'm just waiting until I'm so tired that my brain shuts down."

He nods solemnly, doesn't push her further. He grabs her leg, meaning to give her a reassuring squeeze, but she jumps back, inhaling sharply through her teeth and practically slaps his hand away. At first he's concerned she thinks he's coming on to her, but the tears forming in her eyes tell him she recoiled in pain. He looks down at her legs, struggling to understand, faint traces of red seeping through the soft fabric of her pyjamas.

"April?" He's still struggling, deep frown spreading across his face, hoping she has some perfectly logical explanation to offer.

"I'm fine." She quickly gets up and leaves the room, closing his door firmly, and the door to her own room across the hall. He can hear the key turning in her lock, as final evidence that the conversation is over. He knows with the utmost certainty that there is no logical explanation and she is a long way away from being fine.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: sorry, this took me ages to get a grip on, the heat over here has been too damn much, I couldn't think straight. Thanks for all your reviews, I do enjoy a Jackson POV even though it's usually much harder to write than April. Please let me know what you think of this next instalment.**

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She is standing in the place where her best friend was murdered. In the place she took her last breath, where the last traces of her are still visible, where a bullet hole in the wall bears witness not only to that ominous day but to the fact that six weeks ago she was here, living flesh and pumping blood. She stands in the exact spot where she tripped over Reed's body, smashing her nose into the linoleum floor, sticky, warm liquid soaking her clothes and rushing out of her nose. This is the spot she feels the closest to Reed, in the supply closet between racks stuffed with gauze, tubes and instruments. This spot signifies her last breath and encompasses both her life and her death. Even though she has a grave she can go to, this spot has become vital to her, this place that is excruciatingly painful for her to come to, yet has become the only place where she can really feel all her pain. Here she is the closest she will ever be to Reed, and yet she is the furthest away from her as she ever has been.

She never realised that the breaking of her heart would be such a protracted, unbearable process. She figured her heart would break like a plate, quickly and decisively, and then she could get back to the business of gluing the pieces back together, and given enough time she would be whole again, only a telltale hairline fracture bearing witness to past devastation. She now realises her heart isn't breaking at all, it's tearing. Each half of her heart slowly tearing away from the other, like a piece of cotton weighed down on either side of the tear. One side is weighed down with her grief, the grief over dead friends, the grief of watching her living friends crumble, the grief of losing her faith. The other side is weighed down with guilt, the guilt of survival, the guilt of harming herself, the guilt of losing her faith as she is faced with her first true test. As she stands in the spot where Reed's heart pumped out blood a final time, she tries her hand at prayer once again and comes up empty, the grief and the guilt tearing her apart with every breath, with every heartbeat.

She slips in to the toilet in the residents' locker room, make up bag clutched tightly in her hands, wiping hot tears from her eyes. She is a doctor, a surgeon, and she knows what physical craving her body is having. Cutting into skin releases endorphins, endorphins relieve pain. She cuts into her skin but bleeds from her heart, hurting her outsides to kill the thing on the inside, battling herself and losing every day. The pain from her insides seeps down her legs like red wine, stilling the raging war she is fighting with herself, smile reaching her lips. She is a doctor, a surgeon and she knows exactly what she is doing and why she is doing it, but that doesn't stop her from doing it every day, sometimes several times a day. Scars form on her legs, some already white and flaky, some with hard, black scabs, some red, angry and swollen, and still some oozing fresh blood. She runs her fingers over them, calmed by their appearance, the history of her pain written on her skin. She hates the fact that this is the only thing that gives her any real sense of calm.

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She avoids Jackson furiously, both his questioning eyes and his presence. She is careful not to be alone with him, stops going to him at night even as she hears him screaming from his relentless nightmares. She takes the opportunity to act her peppiest, shiniest self when she's around him, amping up her fake smile, making sure her pony tail is extra bouncy. Her false bravado doesn't last long when a few days later somehow her secret is out.

"Hah, you're a virgin!" Alex gleefully snorts, four sets of eyes instantaneously measuring her.

She tries to deny it, tries to stick to her ludicrous story, but she realises her efforts are futile. Meredith's eyes are already filled with amused pity, which is the last thing she wants. She can handle the mocking, the laughing, the jokes, but the pity is hard to bear. She doesn't want any more reminders that she is not as she should be, that her once sincere promise to Jesus has lost all meaning now that she no longer has her faith. Her head drops as she suddenly misses Reed, needing her reassurance and understanding in this exact moment. She never had any secrets from her, Reed always respected her promise to wait until marriage and right now she would've had the perfect snappy comeback.

The mocking and teasing doesn't let up, not that she expected it to. The others use her as a deflection, something apparently hilarious and lighthearted to stop them having to talk about anything serious. Except she feels anything but amused, and as her friends add further weight to the half of her heart already buckling under the strain of guilt and shame, she snaps. She takes a big swig of her whiskey, the cold liquid burning her throat as she lays into them, tearing apart Alex for avoiding the elevators, spilling to everyone about Jackson's nightmares and stating the obvious to Meredith and Lexie about their better halves. As she takes an even bigger gulp of her drink, she doesn't feel better, slightly vindicated perhaps, but mainly disheartened. Her friends have failed her, their ridicule in stark contrast to the support she knows Reed would have given her. She makes her excuses as soon as it's not too conspicuous. She feels rather than hears Jackson following her outside, his voice pleading as he calls out her name.

"Are you ok?" he says to her back, but she refuses to turn to him. He's not deterred, rushes to catch up with her and stills her with his hands on her arms."Stop running away from me, ok?"

"Just don't," she snaps, pushing his hands away.

"I'm sorry about the virginity thing," he sighs, blocking her path as she tries to slip past him. "And I'm sorry about the other night."

The initial anger and indignance she was ready to throw in his face vanishes, she is not ready to have this confrontation. She wraps her coat around her tightly, shielding herself from the elements and him. She's not sure exactly what he suspects, but she would rather not find out, so she nods briefly, avoids his glance and tries once more to slip past him.

"Hey, I don't know what's going on with you," he starts, grabbing her arm before she can get clear of him, "but I know you're not ok."

"It's fine," she tells him, holding his gaze and admitting that she is not fine, but it's not his concern that she isn't. He lets her go, lets her slip past him into a cab and avoid the issue once again.

She locks the door to her room behind her, arranging her weapons on the neatly made bed in front of her. There is Reeds old make up bag, metal objects clanking against one another as she puts it down. Then there is the black notebook, already more than half full, pages brittle from the hard, angry indentation of ink. Finally, a new addition to her arsenal, a brown paper bag that rustles as she retrieves a glass bottle filled with brown liquid. She starts there, not bothering with a glass, letting the alcohol numb the back of her throat. Her mind is violent as she saves the best for last, scribbling frantically in her book, pen breaking through the paper as she dots her 'I's and punctuates each sentence with bold full stops and multiple exclamation points. Self-loathing claws it's way up her throat, ripping from her mouth in a silent scream. Her skin longs to feel the cold metallic blade coax blood out, her heart racing at the thought, but she holds back. She lets the alcohol take effect, burning her insides as it hits her stomach in intervals, bringing her closer to the sleep she needs so badly. She drinks until she is sure she won't have any trouble passing out, before finally turning to the make up bag. She barely registers any pain as she tears her skin open, alcohol numbing her body and her brain, and as the violence of her mind lets up the cutting and the alcohol lulls her into a deep sleep.

* * *

_I'm here for you_. _You're not alone. You will always have me. If you need anything, anything at all. _It's all bullshit, no one is here with her at 2.30 in the morning when she takes her increasing frustration out on herself, escalating her own destructive routines. She is alone as the cutting becomes more frequent, partly because each cut becomes less potent the more cuts she makes, partly because she finds more reasons to. She is alone as the black book fills up rapidly, amplifying every negative thought she ever held about herself, burying poisonous, leaded thoughts between the pages. She still finds solace in her job, so she doesn't drink every day, but when she does she sticks solely to the hard stuff, pushing her limits in her own company, away from prying eyes, alone. She finds other outlets for her raging emotions, dying her hair a fierce, deep red, because she doesn't want to look in the mirror anymore and not recognise herself without good reason, a socially acceptable reason. She even goes and gets herself a tattoo, the word 'DUCKIE' marring her skin in ugly red capitals on her hipbone. The tattooist looks sceptical as she picks the boldest, most brutal font she can find and asks for it to be put on the most painful, least visible place on her. She barely scrunches her nose as the vibrating needle digs into the thin layer of skin over her bone. In all these moments she is alone, none of the people who promised her she wouldn't be are there with her. She has become her own worst enemy, and she fleetingly wonders how far it can go, if it will ever end.

She spends the last of her pay check on new heels and a new dress, black and tight, thinking that these beautiful things will disguise her own lack of beauty. She puts on her new shoes and clothes, curls her hair, applies thick layers of mascara to her lashes, carefully smears pink gloss on her lips. She slides into a stool by the dimly lit bar, looks to her left and lets a sultry smile spread across her lips as the tall man looking at her moves closer. He asks if he can buy her a drink, she nods and asks for a neat whiskey. The alcohol gets to her, making her stomach warm as the man whispers sugary sweet nothings into her ear. He tells her she looks sexy and she practically purrs like a cat as he keeps offering her drinks and she keeps knocking them back.

"Let's get out of here," he says quietly, eyes intent.

And because she is drunk, and because he is handsome and sweet, and because she is broken and she doesn't have any promises to keep anymore, she nods, head bobbing and swaying as he pulls her towards the door. She giggles as her feet stumble in the new shoes, leaning against the tall man. He opens the door to his car for her to slide into the passenger seat, but as she goes to thank him, a hand on her arm stops her in her track.

"April," Jackson's familiar voice breaks the moment. "Stop."

There is a heated discussion between the two tall men, but she barely registers, because she knows who is going to win the argument and she is too drunk to protest.

"I'm taking you home," Jackson eventually says, voice strained and angry. And because she is drunk, and because Jackson is determined, and because she doesn't really want to know how far this can go or how much whiskey it is going to take for her to love herself again, she nods, head bobbing and swaying as she follows him, his arm steadying her.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: thanks for your lovely reviews guys! I apologise in advance for how long it will take before I manage to update over the next few weeks, things are about to get a bit hectic for me, but I hate to leave it too long between updates so if I can I will. As always, I really appreciate your thoughts on this.**

* * *

"What the hell were you thinking?"

His voice is full of accusation, fists clenched and brow furrowed, slamming the door behind them for effect. She seems oblivious to his anger, stumbling towards the stairs in her crazy high heels, muttering something incoherent under her breath.

"What?" He can hear the impatience in his own voice as she seems lost in her own world, carelessly kicking off her shoes, nearly toppling over in the process.

Suddenly she clasps her hand tightly over her mouth and runs up the stairs before he has a chance to question her further. He sighs as he slowly climbs the stairs after her, shaking his head as he hears her retching noises from the bathroom. By the time he catches up with her she's slumped over the toilet, gurgling and dry heaving. He's furious with her, but he still bends over and pulls back the hair from her face. She tries to stand up, tries to tell him she's fine, but she can't seem to arrange her legs right and stays on the floor. It's impossible to stay angry with her, so he pulls her up from the floor, but she is fighting him, trying to push him away. He grabs her wrists and pulls her close, her arms still struggling inside his hands, but her head flops onto his shoulder, muttering expletives into his shirt. She finally calms down but she almost slumps to the floor again as she does, still intoxicated.

"I'm fine, honestly" she tries, pushing back from him, except she muffles her words so baldly it doesn't sound like three words, just one. "Hon-est-ly." She tries again, enunciating each syllable, as if that would convince him.

"Right," he sighs, turning her around and unzipping her dress, realising he has to sober her up.

She's too drunk to register what he's doing, he has to steady her with one arm as he slides the dress to the floor. He reminds himself that he's a doctor, they both are, as he realises she's not wearing a bra underneath, tries to avert his eyes as he clumsily maneuvers her into the bathtub. She's only semi-conscious as he turns the shower on, seemingly unaffected by the cool water hitting her. He tries to avert his eyes, but the marks on her legs are impossible to overlook. He almost laughs at his own concern a minute ago regarding her bare chest, because this is what she really wouldn't want him to see, this is what she is running from, this is what she is thinking of when she says she is fine and he knows she's lying. Her thighs are red and raw, covered in angry cuts and gashes, thick scar tissue already forming over the older marks. The water under her turns pink as it washes away dried blood, marbling the white tub. This is what pain looks like, liquid self-hatred circling the drain and disappearing, leaving behind fading marks that will be replaced by fresh ones before they are entirely gone.

* * *

He watches her sleep, her chest rising and falling under the sheets, breathing heavily under her alcohol fuelled oblivion. He slips out of her room quietly, noting the empty whiskey bottles neatly lined up by the door. He knows she's been hurting, he's seen the fake smile, the red-rimmed eyes, noticed that her laugh has just been a little too loud and lasted a little too long. He's seen that she always wears thick pj bottoms even if the weather is hot, noticed that she ducks into the toilet in the locker room and stays in there for a long time, always emerging visibly calmer. He's tried talking to her, even though he's got no idea what to say to her, but she avoids, deflects and rebuffs like a pro. Their shaky alliance has him wondering whether he's entitled to push her on this, if they are good enough friends for him to have an opinion at all, though deep down he knows that she's it for him, and vice versa. He has to be the one to do this with her, there is no one else, so after a restless night, punctuated by the usual nightmare, he slips back into her room and watches her sleep, waiting for her to wake up.

"Ouch" is all she can manage as she slowly wakes, clutching her head and wincing as she tries to sit up.

He's not sure how much she remembers from last night, though the way she clutches the sheets around her and refuses to look him in the eye tells him she at least remembers how she got into bed.

"You need to start talking to me" he says quietly, trying to catch her eye. "This isn't you."

"Maybe I'm not the person everyone thinks I am."

Her voice is unsteady, barely audible and she still refuses to look at him. The silence hangs between them. He doesn't say that she scares him, that he doesn't know how far she will go. He doesn't say that he's worried that he's too late, that he's out of his depth. He doesn't say that he is scared she has only just started.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he whispers, his own voice unreliable as he is reminded how deep some of the cuts on her legs were.

"Because you wouldn't understand," she replies, voice shaking. "Because you don't understand. I hope you never do, I hope you never have to know what it feels like to hate yourself so much that carving up your own skin is the only thing that feels better, to be so desperate for relief. I hope you'll never find out."

He swallows hard at her words, staring plainly into the darkest, dustiest corners of her mixed up soul.

"It's hard for me to watch you hurt yourself," he simply says, still trying to catch her eye.

"If you knew what was going on in my head, the cuts would be nothing," she whispers, pulling the sheets tighter around her.

Her fake smile is nowhere in sight as she finally looks at him, face crumpled, tears slowly rolling down her face.

"I don't want to be me."

* * *

The blood keeps coming, spilling over and soaking the light blue cloth covering the patient in front of him, dripping heavily on the floor and filling up his shoes. He tries to stem the flow, frantically grabbing lap pads, but this time he's not alone. He recognises April's eyes peering over a surgical mask, calmly focused on the gaping hole in the patient's abdomen. It takes a moment for the scene to come into focus, but as it does he realises she isn't helping, she's got a scalpel dug deep into her arm, blood pouring, filling up the cavity he's trying to repair, and its only now he looks at the patient's face and realises it's Charles lying there. He wakes up with a jolt, throat sore from a scream he never heard. His room is pitch black, but he can see a figure hovering at the end of his bed, barely lit up by the light from his alarm clock, which would tell him it's 4.15 am if he could be bothered to look. April climbs into bed and crawls up next to him as he turns on the small lamp on the nightstand next to him. Before he can even turn back to her fully, her arms are around his neck, clutching him tightly. He understands this is as much for her as it is for him, but it still takes him by surprise that she's back after weeks of absence.

"Hey, I'm ok," he reassures her, stroking her back softly. "You're ok."

"Me and you," she sniffs, pulling back slightly.

Her eyes are red and puffy, hair still an unholy mess from the unskilled rinse he gave it last night.

"Me and you," he agrees, gently brushing away a lock of red hair from her tear stained face.

Her mouth is on his before he has a chance to register what's happening. Her lips draw him in, and he instinctively kisses her back, his tongue meeting hers. He pulls back with some effort when his brain catches up.

"April," he protests, mouth still on hers. "We shouldn't."

"Jackson, please," she mumbles into his lips, not breaking contact.

She pulls him in again, hands grasping the back of his head, tugging him down towards her.

"You're a virgin," he reminds her, and himself, tearing away from her. "You're a virgin, you're a virgin."

Whatever this is, it doesn't feel right. She is broken, he is too, and this feels like it might destroy them both.

"I need to feel something other than pain," she pleads, leaning her forehead on his. "I need something to keep me from going insane. I need you."

She looks up, hands clutching his neck, eyes steady. She seems so certain, determined even, that this is right and that this should happen, when all he can think of are the reasons why it shouldn't.

"It's ok, really," she says softly when he still hesitates, kissing him softly, carefully, convincingly.

He's not at all sure he should be doing this, but he does anyway, because he also wants to feel something other than pain, to feel like there is more to him than anger, guilt and grief. He lets her yank him down on top of her, lets his instinct take over and pull her top over her head and her pj bottoms down her legs. He pauses when he sees that there are fresh cuts that weren't there last night, but she drags him back up and distracts him with her mouth and her tongue. Though he is the one that is supposed to know what to do, he is at her mercy, he follows her lead. She should be worse at this, but her hands are decisive, she doesn't hesitate for a moment as she removes his clothes and pulls him closer. Desire takes a hold of his body, burning his flesh, surprising him with its intensity. He pours all his pain into her, lets his grief poison her skin, his anger torture her body. He clings to her with every suppressed emotion he has, claims her with all his sharp and broken edges. The dried tears on her cheeks taste like salt, her breath still tastes like whiskey. She presses against him with all she has, her wounds, her bleeding flesh, her injured soul, her pain pressing against his. She needs something from this that he is unsure if he can deliver, not sure he can get her high enough to free her from her sadness, that his drug is what she wants coursing through her veins. He loves her without loving, makes love to her so they can forget, so they can erase space and time, because love is what it is when your friend asks you to help her feel, love is all it could be.

Afterwards the worry comes back. He strokes her hair as she rests her head on his chest, calming her breath and trying to calm his own beating heart and racing brain.

"You glad we did that?" he asks breathlessly, carefully.

"Yeah," she says, half-heartedly, unconvincingly. "Yeah." The second confirmation is more certain, but he's not sure if it's for his benefit or her own.

He knows this is not what she had in mind when she waited this long, he knows she wanted special, she wanted romance, she wanted a beach at sunset. She hadn't planned to bang her friend because of some physical necessity born out of grief and terror, as a way to mess herself up without resorting to a blade, just as he hadn't planned on being the one to help her do it. He worries he took advantage of her, that she took advantage of him, that somehow they have started hurting each other instead of helping each other.

"We should get some sleep," she mutters into his chest, voice sleepy, breath warm against his skin.

"Mmm," he agrees, moving her closer, but she's already asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: sorry for the long wait, I really hate writing like this, but work is seriously intense at the moment. Thanks so much for your lovely reviews, I know this is a lot darker and sadder than most fanfic out there so I'm so happy that at least some of you like it:) I promise I'll try to update again sooner than last time. Please let me know what you think:)**

* * *

She has lost. She has lost in every imaginable and every unimaginable sense. Nothing will be as it was, nothing will ever be as it should be, and what is cannot be anything either. She hates this new version of her life where she no longer has a best friend, no longer has a relationship with Jesus, where she no longer has her sanity. The version where she no longer is a virgin. She forces her eyes open and is faced with a view of smooth dark skin stretched over the bumps and grooves of hard abdominal muscle and her own treacherous hands resting dangerously close to the thick of dark hair disappearing beneath a thin sheet. She can feel his chest rising and falling under heavy breaths below her head, a steady heartbeat pulsing in her ear. She is desperate to move yet terrified to wake him, to face him. She gently lifts her hands away from his warm body, and when he doesn't stir her head follows. She holds her breath as she slides out of bed and into her clothes, wincing as she catches a glimpse of her scarred, cut up legs, a sight she had not wanted to share with anyone. Jackson is still fast asleep as she slips quietly out of his room, arm stretched out next to him where he had made space for her during the night.

She retreats to her room, feeling like a thief in the night. She flops face first on her bed, burying her face in her pillow and groaning in frustration. She tries to make sense of the events of the last couple of days, tries to figure out her own behaviour. She had been hell bent on erasing her own innocence, first by falling in with a random stranger and when that didn't work out she had begged her friend, practically forced herself upon him until he took pity on her and gave in. She had asked him to make her feel something other than pain, and she had, briefly. For a few moments she'd forgotten all about her pain, about the circumstances that had brought them to this point. For a moment it had been just her and him, just the two of them locked together not in grief but in pleasure. The moment had been all too brief, and the guilt that hit her once again had multiplied in strength when it returned, broken promises eating at her conscience.

No one really talks about mourning after a loss of faith, crying because He is suddenly gone, withering and fading in her mind and her soul. She's not sure whether she had wanted to punish herself or Him, to show Him all the things she could now do without Him in her life, to show Him that she'd let Him go, just as He's let her go. In the face of her broken promise, her vindictive thoughts humble and sting. She has always considered her faith a safe place, but now she is terrified, like she will always exist as someone wandering from the ruins she used to call home. She grabs Reed's old make up bag and retrieves a blade, letting the cool metal run hot against her skin. She cuts one time for Jesus, for breaking her promise to Him, for using Him as an excuse to do so. This is not how you regain trust. She cuts two times for Jackson, for treating him as a means to an end, for leaving him without an explanation. This is not how you treat a friend, a friend who depends on their friendship as much as she does. She cuts three times for herself, for feeling weak, for feeling guilty. This is not how you treat yourself.

* * *

She hasn't done anything yet. That's what she told the man who held a gun to her head, the man who had let his grief transform him into a monster. That part was true and still is. She hasn't gone on to perform medical miracles or heroic acts because her life was spared. Instead, she has let her grief transform her into a monster too, just like the man who murdered her best friend in cold blood. She lets the cold blooded murderer inside her direct all her hate and anger in on herself, demanding an eye for an eye from herself, drawing her own blood as penance. She passes out her own judgement like she is God, deciding she is not allowed to live yet, maybe not ever, throwing herself into purgatory with every angry word she etches in blue ink into her black book or red ink into her body. She throws the empty whiskey bottles by her door a regretful look, longing for the numbness they provide, but decides it's not worth it considering the trouble she got herself into the last time and considering she has surgeries to perform tomorrow, which require her steady hand. There is a hard knock on the door, and she glumly realises she forgot to lock her door at the exact same time as the handle turns and Jackson enters her room.

She hasn't finished yet. That part is truer now than it was then, when her shaking hands and her red-rimmed eyes pleaded with steady hands and empty eyes and found their respite. She has not started anything good, but she's not finished destroying herself, not finished destroying the one close friend she has left it seems. She owes him explanation upon explanation, but finds none as he sits down next to her and sets his questioning eyes on her. Instead she scrambles to cover her legs, quickly sliding into a pair of jeans that chafe and sting her raw wounds as she pulls them up. She follows his eyes from her denim clothed thighs to the collection of empties by the door, to the open pages of her black book and the badly concealed blade sticking out of the open make up bag carelessly discarded on her bed. Jackson shoots her a look she can't interpret, but she is sure there is both disappointment and disgust in there. She has to steady herself against her dresser to be able to take that look from him. He knows now. He knows the depth of her darkness, the lengths she will go to to destroy herself, the height of her fall. She has never felt more exposed than now, not even when she was physically naked in front of him mere hours ago.

"Why did you leave like that?" he asks wearily, like he can't figure her out.

She is almost thankful that he isn't asking about the fresh cuts, or the book, even though his actual question is just as difficult to answer as the ones she had been fearing.

"I just needed to think," she says, but as the words leave her mouth they sound insincere and incomplete even to her. "I'm sorry."

"Why did you do it? Why did you let me?" His face is contorted into a deep frown, one he reserves only for when he's deeply frustrated with her, one he's been wearing all to often recently.

"I don't know", is all she has to offer, which doesn't absolve either of them, doesn't diminish his frown or release her chewed up lip.

"I knew you'd regret it," he shakes his head, staring down to the floor. "I shouldn't have taken advantage."

"Taken advantage?" She practically scoffs as she says it, incredulous at his apparent guilt over something she initiated, something she pushed him into. "I kissed you, remember?"

She hasn't been loved yet. That part was true then, but now she's not sure anymore. She knows it's not romantic love that forces them together again, that makes her fall into her friends arms with a hunger and a need so strong that it occurs to her to be embarrassed by it, but there is no time. It's not the kind of love that drives you to commit mass murder when you lose it, not the kind of love you utter with your last breath as you realise you have run out of time, not the kind of love that propels you to place yourself between a gun and your loved one and ask to be sacrificed in his place. It's the kind of love that occurs when two bleeding hearts are pressed together, that compels her to reveal herself to him again, to let him see her scars because his perfect skin heals her bleeding flesh. It's the kind of love you find when two injured souls meet, which makes her breathe out straight into his lungs, makes her bleed on him, makes her surrender and let go, just for a moment. It's the kind of love between two friends that share a bond of pain, friends that need to forget that pain for the briefest amount of time, friends that share the same demons and the same need to suppress them. He tells her with his mouth and his touch that he needs to feel something other than pain as much as she does. She sets aside her guilt and her grief to make space for him, tracing her urgency on his lips, letting his hands burn her skin in place of cold, sharp metal.

* * *

He becomes her new weapon against herself, a new addiction to grapple with, a necessity to her survival. She seeks relief in sinful earthly pleasures, reaffirming her loss of innocence and her loss of faith by indulging in pre-marital, non-romantic weaknesses of the flesh. His touch numbs her pain, his kiss soothes her raging mind, his body stilling inside hers makes her forget her grief, just in that moment. She wants each night with him to be endless, she wants to lose herself in him, to forget, to stay oblivious. She lets him poison her skin, provoke her body, hurt her brain, lets him substitute the blades, the book, the bottles. She shudders with pleasure as he runs his fingertips lightly over her healed tattoo, over her raw scars, over the skin that protects her heart. As soon as they're done she wants more, because as soon as they're done the grief comes crashing back, her mind rages once again and her pain is as strong as it ever was. He gets her drunk, gets her high, but he can't stop her from crashing back down. Her consuming desire for him takes her by surprise, he is not a means to an end any longer, he is the end.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: sorry it took me so long to update again, I really planned on updating sooner but it was out of my hands. Hope the extra long chapter makes up for it! Please let me know your thoughts, I really need your feedback :)**

* * *

He watches April sleep next to him, exhausted from a night shift, exhausted from having come for him in the middle of the night. Grey morning light filters through the slots in the blinds, leaving a small dotted line of bright light in the cascade of red curls resting on his pillow. It's almost time for him to get up, but he's stalling, revelling in the still unfamiliar sight in front of him. He runs his fingers over the slightly raised lines of the bold tattoo on her hip, tracing the letters slowly. The red letters are uncharacteristic for the rest of her body, all pale, perfect skin, unblemished and unspoilt, until his eyes reach her thighs. The red, angry scars running like train tracks over her legs puts her tattoo into context, puts her newly red hair into perspective.

"What does your tattoo mean?" His voice wakes her, and for a moment disorientation spreads across her face as she turns to face him.

"Oh, umm..," she hesitates, not just out of sleepiness. "It's, um... It's silly really."

She smiles softly, but her eyes are dark as she quickly looks away.

"Duckie?" he pushes, sensing that he shouldn't, masking his insistence by running soft kisses along her collarbone.

"Don't call me that!" She pushes him back, her eyes suddenly alert and he knows he's crossed another line with her.

"Ok...," he exhales, trying to pull her back. "Sorry."

She lets him place his arms back around her, lets him plant a soft, apologetic kiss on her lips, relaxing into his embrace ever so slightly.

"It means ugly duckling," she concedes, shrugging it off like it's not important, like she does with everything that matters to her. "It's what my sisters used to call me, because I grew up with braces and pimples and they still see me that way."

Her voice trails off, but he doesn't miss the pain in her voice. Before he has a chance to respond the alarm on his bedside table goes off and she straightens her back and forces a wide smile on her mouth.

"Time to get up," she chides, placating him with a kiss as she pushes him away, effectively ending the conversation.

All the pain and darkness that she hides behind that beaming smile scares him, partly because he is the only one that has seen glimpses of it, and partly because he's concerned he's a part in it.

At first he thought that this thing with her was a one-off, something she needed to get out of her system and something he could chalk down to a moments' weakness on his part. He should have known that sleeping with your best, and perhaps only, friend would be complicated, not the least because they can't seem to stop sleeping with each other. Under normal circumstances he'd be all for drowning his sorrows in sex, for fucking the pain away, but with April it was never about sex or fucking in the first place. She knows too much about him, about his past and present, about his pain, to ever be someone he could hook up with casually. He knows too much about her, about her devastation, her downwards spiral, to not feel responsible for her, to want to protect her. What she gets out of it he doesn't know, she doesn't seem happier for it, on the contrary she seems conflicted. Every time they fall into bed together he can see the faint signs of an internal struggle in her, she bites her lip and throws her head back, looking to the heavens as if she is waiting for some sort of divine seal of approval. She said she wanted to feel something other than pain, so when pleasure rips through her body and forces her to shut her eyes, he keeps his open, so he can see her let it all go, let abandon take her away from her pain. It doesn't last long enough, because afterwards all he can see in her is guilt, a guilt he can't fathom and one she doesn't share with him. Afterwards she chews on her lip and gnaws at her fingers, and she doesn't look at him for a while, lost in her own thoughts. So he pulls back, waits for her to come to him, and she keeps coming. Without fail, she always comes back, looking for that moment when her pain is a little duller.

She still cuts, he knows it. He sees it. There are fewer fresh gashes on her thighs now than a few weeks ago, hard scabs forming over old wounds, but there are enough fresh, red ones for him to notice. She still cuts and he wishes she wouldn't, wishes he could make her feel enough to forget her urge to slash into her own skin. She still cuts, but he still dreams. He always dreams when they spend a rare night apart, he sometimes dreams when she is asleep next to him. The dream is still the same, still terrifying, still painful, still unresolved. She is still broken, and so is he. Two wrongs don't make a right, right? He wishes he could call her out, tell her to just stop, but he can't because he wouldn't be able to just stop either, if she turned those words back on him. She can't stop, he can't stop, and they can't stop doing whatever it is they are doing to each other either.

* * *

"So, how long have you been boinking Kepner?"

At first he isn't sure he's heard Alex right, between mouthfuls of lunch and the general buzz of the hospital cafeteria.

"I'm sorry, what?" he coughs, after nearly choking on his water.

"How long?" Alex demands, not stopping his relentless chomping, not bothering to even look at him.

Across the table from them, Cristina and Meredith have stopped mid-conversation to wait for his answer.

"We're not...boinking," he scoffs, but he's unable to stop his eyes from blinking like they always do when he's thinking of something unpleasant or lying or both. "I don't even know what that means."

"They're boinking," Cristina states, gleefully waving her fork at him.

"You took her virginity?" Meredith scolds, batting his arm a little too hard.

"I didn't take anything, ok?" he snaps back, trying to ignore Cristina's cackling and Alex's muffled sniggering.

"You defiled a virgin!" Meredith isn't backing down, and he's running out of ways to deny it, so he quickly finishes his lunch and leaves the table without further explanation.

As he leaves he can hear them still talking about it incredulously, Cristina calling out after him.

"But what about her virgin superpowers?"

It bothers him that his new group of friends so easily assume that he manipulated April, that he tricked her into something she didn't want, that him defiling her was the only possible way any scenario between her and him could ever play out. It bothers him more than he would like it to, because deep down he worries that it's what April thinks too. Rationally he knows that she initiated it the first time, that he lets her initiate every time, but the guilt he sees written in her face, the guilt she never voices or explains, that guilt worries him, torments him. He doesn't believe in guilty pleasures, he believes in being upfront about what you want, to own your cravings and obsessions, to stand for your own actions. But he can't be upfront about wanting her, more than he should, when she won't. He can barely admit to himself that April Kepner's no-longer-virgin superpowers have worked their magic on him, allowing a little light back in his life.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and as he fishes it out the number on the screen warns him to brace himself for the impending conversation.

"Hey, Mrs Percy, how are you?" He answers in his best Avery voice, smooth and sparkling, perfected through many a formal function and board meeting, determined to keep the conversation upbeat.

She chides him for not calling her Evelyn, as she always does, then carries on making small talk, mimicking the chipper tone he's set. She sounds better, like it doesn't hurt as much to breathe anymore, like it doesn't take everything she has to make her voice carry. He feels himself releasing a breath he didn't even know he was holding.

"You sound better," she says, echoing his own thoughts.

"I think better is the best we can hope for right now," he reflects, thinking of red curls on his pillow.

"How is April doing?" she continues, following familiar patterns.

"She's better, I guess." He should say hopes, because his guess isn't good enough.

"Oh good, I was worried about her," she confesses, and he hopes that he can say that to her again the next time they speak with more conviction in his voice. "The last time we spoke she told me she stopped going to church, has she started going again?"

The question dumbfounds him, and for a moment he thinks they must be talking about someone else. April has never mentioned church to him, nor can he remember any time where religion has been part of the conversation. He's seen her pray exactly twice, one time at Reed's funeral and then again the following day at Charles' funeral. He'd been doing it with her, bending his head and saying the words he'd been taught at school, except he hadn't really been praying and he didn't think she had been either.

"I'm not sure," he deflects, piecing together April's long-standing, now lost, virginity, her apparent internal struggle, her scars, but the pieces don't quite fall into place.

When he finally hangs up with Charles' mother he realises that she never asked her most impossible question, perhaps realising, as he has, that no matter how many times she asks there will never be an answer to that question.

* * *

He doesn't get a chance to confront April with the non-going to church revelation, all week he's on days and she's on nights, and they only see each other when they fall into each other and he forgets the rest. Like ships in the night they cross each other at a meaningful distance, no time for anything but the essentials. Right now it feels like sleeping with her, sleeping next to her is essential, watching her pleasure eases his pain, feeling her release lifts his spirits. At home he is all skin and teeth and abandon, at work he's all frown and steel and focus.

He's trying his hardest to make up for lost time, to prove himself to Dr Altman while Cristina is out of commission, to regain his sense of purpose and find his sea legs. All of that is lost in an instance as the alarm suddenly wails in his ears, causing him to break out in a cold sweat, his body jolting back from the bed he'd been pushing down the corridor. He panics even before he figures out that both the door behind him and the door in front of him is sealed shut, effectively trapping him. The alarm is impossibly loud, and he can't think straight, all he can think of is getting out, he needs to get out. His chest feels tight, he's struggling to breathe, only inhaling shallow breaths. He slams his hands against the locked doors, shouting at whoever is on the other side of the glass to let him out, but they can't hear him. He can't hear himself, the alarm is piercing his eardrums.

"Dr Avery!" A voice breaks through the shrill of the alarm, but he can't focus on the person the voice belongs to. "Your patient!"

It's like he's moving in slow motion, dragging his focus away from the indistinguishable figures on the other side of the glass and turning around to see his patient clutching his chest in agony. Instinct drives him, he rushes over and cracks his fist against the patient's chest just as the man loses consciousness. His palm spreads out across the patient's chest, and he starts compressions, forcefully pushing the heel of his hand down to force air out of the lungs. He continues to press his hands down and release pressure at a steady pace, elbows stiff, eyes barely focused. The man has dark hair, just like Charles. His build is about the same, too. He's too late, he knows it. Even as he increases his pace, adds more weight behind each compression, he's fighting a losing battle. The blood is filling up the cavity, soaking his shoes, and no matter how hard he pushes down he can't stop the blood flowing. Somewhere in the distance, he can hear a voice carry through over the sound of the alarm.

"You'll break his ribs!"

The words make no sense to him, what do the ribs matter when there is all this blood to contain? Beneath his frantic hands, Charles' life is ebbing out, and once again he is useless to save him. He barely registers when the alarm sounds off, his ears are ringing and his hands are still working to save that life he so desperately wants to save. He can feel hands pulling him away and it takes him a moment before he is brought back to reality, before he realises that the man he's been working on is not Charles, he's still alive and there is no blood in his shoes.

He storms down the hallway, blindly bursting through swing doors and rushing past querying eyes, until he is alone. His hands automatically fly to his head as he tries to calm his raging mind and his racing heart. He paces up and down the abandoned corridor, wanting to shake off the nightmare, the persistent feeling of guilt that has been haunting him. He wasn't there. He grabs a trash can and hurls it to the floor, clenching his fists. He couldn't save him. He kicks the black plastic liner further across the floor, not flinching for a second as his toe stumps against the metal frame holding the bag. He can't save everyone. He's had to face that stinging realisation as a doctor many times before, but never as a friend. He has to get out of the hospital, has to get away from the memories that haunt him, so he ducks out while tears push up behind his eyes, not bothering to change out of his scrubs. He has just one destination in mind, there is only one place he can take all his hurt and his guilt.

* * *

He finds her still in his bed, clings to her in desperation as a single tear spills over from his eye, rolling from his cheek onto her shoulder.

"Jackson, what..." She wants an explanation, but he doesn't want to use words.

He buries his face in the soft skin of her chest, shaking silently with pent-up emotion. They sit like that for a long time, him sobbing silently into her, her stroking his head over and over, rocking him in her arms. He drops his hands to her sides, and as his thumbs graze against her breasts her breathing changes, a sharp intake of air suddenly fills her with electricity. He craves her, not just physically, but craves the feeling she gives him, the feeling that someone truly sees him, sees all his messed up insides, his sharp edges. He has her memorised, every curve, every dip, every scar, tracing lines up and down her body where only he has been before. She smells like clean laundry, her skin feels soft against his firm hands. As he inhales her scent and seeks solace in her skin, nothing else matters, the day's events fade and become insignificant. Red curls spread across his chest, rising and falling along with his breathing. He's not sure what she gets out of this, but he knows what's in it for him.

As she readies herself for her shift he confronts her, knowing he has to invest himself in her struggle.

"Mrs Percy called me the other day," he starts, gauging her reaction.

"Oh?" She barely looks at him, scrambling around the room looking for discarded items of clothing.

"She told me you stopped going to church."

"Oh." That stops her in her tracks. She turns to face him, as he waits expectantly for a clarification. "Yeah, I haven't been since before..."

She trails off, but he catches her meaning.

"I didn't even know you went before," he says, trying to not sound as if he is berating her. "Is that why you were a virgin?"

He already knows the answer before she nods her head in confirmation, and that too-familiar guilt spreads across her face.

"Look, I know you prefer your booty calls to be uncomplicated and void of feelings, and I know this is just sex to you, so maybe we should just stop..." She starts to ramble and he can't take one more word of her bullshit.

"It's not just sex, ok?" He comes off a little angrier than he means to, but she's struggling with guilt and he refuses to let her wallow in it on his account. "I have feelings, ok? I've got a lot of them."

"About what?" She's incredulous, like such a thought couldn't be further from her mind.

"About you! About you, April," he practically shouts in frustration, to make her try to see what he sees. "For you." His voice softens as he sees the shock on her face, as he realises that he sounds angry about something he actually feels pretty good about.

"Look, we fell into this thing because you were in a bad place and I was in a bad place and we might as well feel bad together," he continues, as she seems incapable of forming words. "But the thing is, I don't want to feel bad anymore. And I don't want you to feel bad about this either, ok? I don't want you to feel bad because you fell out with God, or because you slept with your best friend or because your sisters made you feel shitty when you were younger, or whatever."

He pauses for a second to see if she's still with him, but he can't read her expression. He inhales deeply as he prepares himself to cross the final line with her, the line that has her stripped bare.

"I don't want you to feel so bad you can't find any other solution than to cut up your own skin. Life is too short to be at war with yourself."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: phew, April's POV gave me some headaches this time round, lots of issues to deal with, so another long wait for an update, sorry about that. The chapters are also getting longer since there is only one more to go after this.**

**Thanks again for your amazing reviews, lovely to read, honestly. I live for your feedback! **

* * *

Her first instinct is confusion. He has feelings, a lot of them, for her, which seems like the unlikeliest scenario for her to find herself in. His revelation leaves her reeling, she doesn't know what to do with her hands, doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to respond or be or handle all the thoughts going through her mind. She has been using him, of this she is sure, but she had thought he was using her too. Using her for release, comfort, companionship, whatever he wants, whatever he needs. She thought she could give him whatever he needs, but now she knows she can't give him the one thing he wants.

Her second instinct is denial. No, he's her friend, friendship is what they share, it will not turn into something more in the future. She shakes her head, runs a cold palm over her forehead and through her hair in an attempt to gain some time. She can't look him in the eye, afraid of what she will see in them, or what he won't see in hers. Guys don't have feelings for girls who are fresh out of the box, naive, annoying. Guys don't have a lot of feelings for girls who are depressed, who can't love themselves, who cut themselves up just so they can breathe freely. Guys like Jackson don't fall for girls like her. Guys like Jackson don't fall at all.

Her third instinct is fear. She folds her arms around herself to stop the rising feeling of shivers, to anchor herself to what she knows is real, to what she can physically feel and touch. There is something in her that makes her afraid of feeling, because she can't hold on to it like a blade, she can't control it like a pen, she can't guarantee it will always be there like her pain. There is something in him that makes her afraid of losing him, because she knows she won't find it in anyone else. There is something about them that makes her afraid things will change, and that they won't. She's got so used to her endless cycle of shame and grief that she doesn't know how to deal with him taking himself out of that equation. If he is not another addiction, another weapon, another method in her madness he doesn't fit in at all.

"Breathe", he commands, voice calm and gentle, grounding her.

"I am trying," she exhales, finally ready to face him. "But please believe me when I say it's not that easy." Breathing is only marginally easier than doing what he is asking her to do.

* * *

She has to rush into work, and ends up being late for her shift, the first time she has ever been late for anything. It throws her off completely, she jumbles her charts, struggles to interpret lab results, chasing her own tail all night. When her shift culminates in a patient dying on the way to the OR, she unravels, leaving Lexie to inform the family on her own. She ducks into the locker room, retrieving Reed's old, and now tattered, make up bag, metal clinking against metal as she locks the bathroom door behind her. She sits down on the toilet for a while letting tears roll down her cheeks in a silent, steady stream, each drop adding to the ocean she can feel herself sinking into. Her darkness swells around her like an endless tidal surge, pulling her deeper, air leaving her lungs with every passing second. She closes her eyes and presses the cold blade against her thigh, poised to pull her out of the sea, to fill her lungs with air again, to save her, to release her. Jackson's words ring in her ears, adding further weight to her already heavy body, pushing the blade through her skin, drawing blood. This is the last thing he wants, this is the last thing she wants, but this is the one thing she needs.

When she gets home in the morning she doesn't slip into his bedroom like she normally would, conscious that her fresh cuts are a betrayal of sorts. She doesn't want to have to explain to him why he can't make her stop just by asking, that she can't stop even if she is trying. She can't explain why it feels like she is helping herself when she hurts herself, why it's easier to seek comfort in the familiarity of that pain rather than trying to figure out the unfamiliar pain she gets in the gut of her stomach when she remembers his hands on her body, his mouth on her lips and the words from his heart. There are no words to explain why her pain/grief/shame cycle is a safer choice than his offer of pleasure/love/healing. She doesn't deserve pleasure, she can't rely on love and she can't imagine healing.

The worst thing about having a broken heart is not being able to remember how you felt before. She's been coping fine with her everyday routine, with her familiar rituals, with her reliable arsenal of weapons to destroy her pain and her suffering. She has found a way to deal with her problems, began to rely on their presence, love them even. She has struggled for so long, she doesn't remember life without her inner demons. She doesn't want to remember, because without them, who is she? Without them she is that girl again, the one who hasn't done anything yet, who hasn't started yet, who hasn't been loved yet. She fears recovery because it is hard, because it is uncertain, because it is free from comfort and relief.

* * *

She straightens her back and takes a deep breath as she pushes open the heavy wooden door and enters the gloomy, cold church. The door slams behind her, the echo reverberating through the cavernous space and the draft causing the many candles to flicker. She had to talk herself into coming back here, to the place that held such significance for her and now serves as a hollow reminder of all the things she has lost. What brought her here today was the feeling she woke up with after too few hours of restless sleep, an unshakeable notion that she is losing. After all the loss she has suffered in the last few months, it feels like fate, or God, or the universe is not done taking from her. She has lost her friends, her faith, her virginity, her sanity, there shouldn't be anything left. Except that she feels like she still has significant things to lose, her sense of control is slipping away from her, what has been holding her together these past months feels brittle and fragile. There is also a friendship at stake, a friendship she has been clinging to, pushing to its limits and the rubber band feels like it's about to ping back. She has to start clawing some things back for herself.

"April?" The voice is familiar and expected, but still throws her. "It's been a while since we've seen you."

Pastor Harris welcomes her with a quizzical look, one that holds so many questions she is not prepared to answer, and she almost backs out. Before she has a chance to follow her instinct to turn on her heel and run, he beckons her to sit on the hard wooden pews and she obliges.

"What brings you back here today?"

She swallows hard and tries to find the words that have eluded her thus far.

"I-i haven't been able to talk to Him in months," she croaks, surprised at the emotion in her voice as the words leave her lips.

"I see", Pastor Harris smiles like he does nothing else with his days but talk to former believers. "So you no longer hold faith in your heart?"

She nods sadly, casting her head down as she admits to herself, to her pastor and to Him that she has lost her way.

"I lost some friends," she explains, even though she knows logic and excuses are not valid in this company. "In the hospital shooting?"

Pastor Harris nods, indicating that he knows what she is referring to more than understanding where she is coming from.

"After... I couldn't connect, couldn't hear Him anymore. Or He couldn't hear me, whichever."

It's hard to talk about it, this betrayal she has felt, the abandonment in her hour of need.

"You've been in great pain, I can tell". He phrases it like a statement, not a question, so she assumes her struggle must be plain for all to see. "So you feel like He deserted you."

It's another statement, and she is taken aback by his calm, matter-of-fact demeanor, as if her struggles are commonplace, her path well travelled by others before her. His calmness doesn't match her own outrage at her loss of faith, there is no shaming or thunderous preaching.

"My dear, God doesn't allow you to hurt because you deserve to be in pain," Pastor Harris continues when she doesn't respond, speaking slowly and deliberately to let his words take full effect. "God allows suffering so that he may bring comfort."

She ponders his words, debating the possibility that He would not put her through anything she can't handle, that He must think that she is strong enough for this darkness, even without Him by her side. It's a frightening scenario, that it's up to her to fight her way back into the light, back into life.

"So suffering is inevitable?" She wrings her hands and shuffles in discomfort against the hard wooden bench. She had hoped that coming here would feel easier, that the familiarity of the place and the distance in time would allow her some reassurance, to come out with a feeling of having something to fall back on.

"Sometimes we can't help but feel invincible going through life. We all feel this way until we hit a wall and everything breaks down. It only takes one bullet from life to make us pray to God that things will get better; even if we've lost faith a while back. You start out thinking life is just love and that there's no loss— but loss is inevitable."

He pauses to let her process, to let her count her losses and mourn the absence of invincibility in herself.

"It's not about the suffering, it's about the journey," he says in his soothing, pragmatic voice. "We never really get over great losses, we absorb them and let them mould us into different, perhaps better people. And it's not His job to swoop down and stop these things from happening to you, to save you. His job is to stand by your side as you save yourself."

It makes sense to her, to think about her suffering as a journey, that each painful step is bringing her to another destination, to someplace where she might finally feel like she belongs.

"I'm just not sure He is standing by me anymore," she sighs, heart heavy at the thought of pulling herself out of the hole she has dug for herself.

Pastor Harris smiles his best I-have-all-the-answers-smile, and it's as reassuring as any of his words.

"Faith comes and goes, rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will."

Her shoulders visibly relax at that, the weight of guilt leaving her body perceptible to the human eye. She hadn't expected to be met with such understanding, such acceptance of her doubts.

"All I can suggest to you, is that if you find in yourself even the least bit of a desire for faith, go back to church with a light heart and without the conscience-raking you no doubt carry around with you."

* * *

She leaves the church with a strange lightness, a feeling she hasn't recognised in herself for months. She heads straight home to get ready for her shift, for once eager to go to work because she loves her job, not because it is a distraction from all the parts of her life she doesn't love. As she picks up her scarf from a chair, the leather bound black book falls to the floor, pages opening to reveal angry black ink against flimsy paper that barely contains the emotion behind the words. She pauses and re-reads some of her darkest, filthiest attacks on herself, and her blood curdles at the undiluted hatred she has directed onto herself. Every word she has written has been poised to destroy her soul, to tear down her spirit, to de-humanize herself, and the black book is filled with them, every crowded page reminding her how little she has mattered to herself. She has been covering the bleeding wounds of her past with cutting, with alcohol, with sex, with any weapon she could get her hands on, but now the bandages are soaked and the pain is oozing through, staining her life. She slowly stands up, running her fingers over the soft cover and the dented corners before she decides. She quickly turns and heads down the stairs to the kitchen and throws the book into the trash. To Lexie, who is leaning against the kitchen counter, it probably seems like it's nothing, what she's just done. She has no idea her hands were gripping the book so tightly that it takes a little while for the blood to return back to her fingers. She has no idea she could barely let go as she hovered the book over the plastic container. She has no idea how badly she wants to rip the lid off and rescue that book from empty yoghurt containers and banana peel and pizza boxes.

"Ready to go?" Lexie smiles, entirely unaware of the greatness of her achievement.

She hurries over to the dishes by the sink and scrapes pasta sauce and salad leaves and stale pizza crusts off them into the trash, covering the black leather in food scraps.

"Yep, now I am," she smiles, relieved that Lexie can detect nothing but her trademark cleaning obsession in her actions.

"There's no point having a chore wheel if you're just going to do everything yourself anyways," Lexie smirks, and she smiles because she just remembered it was Lexie's turn to clean the kitchen.

* * *

When she comes home after her shift it's already 4 AM, and the house is quiet and dark. She waits for Lexie to close the door to her room before she creeps across the hallway into Jackson's room, but the house is so quiet she knows Lexie can probably hear her anyway. There's no point being coy about it now, though, she's been doing this for weeks already. Jackson's fast asleep, his breathing steady and slow and unchanging as she climbs into bed next to him. He stirs as she slides close, wrapping his big arms around her and pulling her in. He carries on sleeping, his breath hot and moist against her bare back, his warmth soothing and reassuring. She wanted to cut several times today, held the cold blade against her skin several times, but she didn't let it break the surface. Each time she wanted to still the emotions running through her, she thought of the two victories she had, facing up to her faith, facing up to her pain. And she thought of him, how she wanted to hurt herself, but couldn't bear to hurt him, so she put the blade down. Another victory for the books.

She is trying to find the strength to open her old wounds, reaching in there and pulling out the core of pain that is keeping her in the past, to make her peace with it. As painful as the process might be, nothing is more painful than staying stuck in this place where she doesn't belong. As she waits for sleep to find her she counts her losses again, wondering why she had been so afraid to be left with nothing. Having nothing is easy, when you have nothing it can't be taken away from you, but she doesn't want nothing anymore. She wants to forget what's gone, appreciate what still remains and look forward to the final outcome. He's worth it, worth risking everything for, worth getting hurt over. Here, wrapped up in his strong arms there is no confusion, she's no longer in denial and she is no longer afraid.

"You're worth the risk," she whispers, clutching his hands in hers.

When she wakes up the next morning he's already gone, but on the pillow next to her is a present waiting for her. She carefully removes the paper, revealing a red notebook just like the one she used to carry around with her. There is a small note with his barely legible handwriting tucked inside the first page.

_"For you. I noticed you lost your old one. J_"

She smiles to herself at his thoughtfulness, slightly nostalgic for those times where the red book held the sum total of her problems. The worst thing about having a broken heart is not being able to remember how you felt before, but she wants to remember. She wants to be that girl again, the one who is ready to do, ready to start, ready to be loved. She opens the book and sees his familiar handwriting on the first page.

_"When your thoughts are loud and harmful, remember that you are not your thoughts."_


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: so the final chapter is here, it's been a tough process both to write and also to read for some of you, sorry about that... Hope this last chapter leave you all with a bit of a silver lining feeling.**

**Please do let me know what you thought of the whole story and this chapter, I love your feedback! I'm sure I'll be back soon enough with something a little lighter.**

**Thanks again for all your amazing support!**

* * *

The sound of the front door slamming and reverberating up the stairwell stirs him. He rolls over crumpled sheets, stretches his tired limbs and finds her before he manages to crack his eyes open. She's right in her spot, red hair in a mess, face buried in the pillow beside him.

"Morning, beautiful," he mumbles, kissing her forehead and pulling her close.

She groans, exhausted from her late shift, exhausted from their late-night shift.

"Do I have to get up _now_?" She muffles her words into his chest.

He laughs at that, because she is normally the morning person out of the two of them, but if his slight soreness is anything to go by, she must be feeling ten times worse.

"I'll make breakfast," he offers, relieved to finally have the house to themselves.

She tumbles out of bed in nothing but a tank top, careless of her still messy hair, her slightly smudged eyeliner, the faint lines that trace her pale skin. He watches her as she searches the room for something slightly more decent to wear, hoping she doesn't find anything anytime soon.

Three months ago she was less cavalier about exposing her legs to him like this, it's a sign of trust that she barely thinks twice about it now. The angry, red scars on her thighs are gone, faint silver lines in their place, reminding him daily of how far she went and how far she has come since. She smiles and it's the genuine, wide, sparkling kind, the kind that he never expects from her but always hopes for. He came to dread her wide smiles back then, when they would never quite reach her eyes, when her eyes were big pools of darkness, hiding her pain. He still worries he's going to see that smile every time the corners of her mouth turns upwards, but this smile is confident, this smile is honest, this smile is not hiding anything.

We all get addicted to something that will take away our pain. For her it was many things, but for him it was her. Every time she used him to replace one of her addictions she only added to his, drawing him in deeper with each needy kiss. She let him replace some of her harmful behaviour, let him distract her from scribbling angrily into that terrible black book, from drinking herself into oblivion, but he couldn't stop her from carrying around that old, battered make up bag containing her metal blades. He was never afraid of her darkness, just afraid that he couldn't drag her out of it. It took him a while to come to terms with the fact that he couldn't control it, he couldn't cure it. It felt like another failure, another weight to his burden, that he was powerless in the face of her addictions and her actions. The insidious part of her disease was that she alone could cure it, and he had to stand back and let her. Slowly she came back to him, came back to herself, she started breathing, she started living. There's no collection of empty glass bottles by the door in her room, no black notebook wedged open by the heavy indentation of ink, making the pages fan out and prop up the leather covers. He never dared check what she wrote in that book, the manic, angry letters giving him as much information as he could contain gracefully, but he's glad it's gone, glad the little red notebook is back, in which she writes deliberately and carefully, with blue ink. She goes to church every now and again, and now that he knows where she goes he can see how much it means to her and how her back is just that little bit straighter when she comes back. She still carries her make up bag around with her, but the sound of metal clinking against metal has been replaced by the sound of plastic clicking against plastic, the sound of lip gloss canisters meeting mascara tubes. She keeps her red hair, has no choice but to keep her red tattoo, but she carries it with a swan-like grace, like the marks on her skin remind her who she was but isn't any longer.

She no longer cuts, and he no longer dreams. He is not haunted by the same 4.15 AM bloody wake up call, he doesn't jolt away from the mattress covered in sweat and guilt and grief. He doesn't exactly remember when he stopped having his nightmares, but maybe that's exactly what he needed, someone who could make him forget the heaviness in his heart without even trying.

"Waffles?" He smirks as they amble down to the kitchen, as the only thing April could find to cover herself with are a pair of very tiny shorts. It really is time for them to get their own place, but she wants what she wants, hardwood floors and a washer dryer, and he doesn't want Alex to third wheel waffle breakfasts.

"Waffles," she confirms, flashing him another steady smile. They circle around each other with ease, like the best friends they have become, like two pieces of a finely tuned clockwork. Just because he offered to make breakfast doesn't mean she wants her hands to be idle, so he cooks, she cleans. She buzzes around him in a comfortable silence, once again rendering her own chore wheel obsolete.

And maybe he finally sees what she gets out of it, this thing with him. She had asked him to make her feel something other than pain, to reach out for her when she was lost. She showed him her dark soul and all the demons that haunted her, and he accepted her challenge. He saw her fragile heart, her hesitation to trust, to feel, to hope, he saw her tortured soul and all he did was accept and wait. He makes her feel, not because of anything, but in spite of everything.

* * *

The Seattle afternoon is drizzly and grey, the tiny drops of water making it hard to keep his eyes fully open as they climb out of his car. The miserable weather matches their grim mood as they slowly make their way up the slight hill of the cemetery. It's been nine months since they lost their friends and had the carpet pulled from underneath them, shaking up their existence. It's been too hard to come here until now, too difficult to set aside the time to fully focus on the lingering grief he still carries around with him every day. The saying _"time heals all wounds" _doesn't apply, his wounds are very much still there, covered in scar tissue, buried deep in his consciousness. The pain is not so acute anymore, so maybe time doesn't heal but simply lessens. The pain hasn't got better, it's just different, each day his grief puts on a new face. April pulls him along towards the top, physically encouraging him in the same way as she has been psychologically encouraging him up to this point. She finds strength in her religion, he finds it in her. If it hadn't been for her determined strides and the firmness of her hand in his he probably wouldn't have made it halfway up this hill.

Finally they reach the two graves, next to each other but not together, just as Charles and Reed were in life. Both the headstones are new and made of black polished stone, each of their names etched in to inform posterity of their short existence and their familiar accomplishments. Son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, grandchild, beloved, deeply missed. His stone is square, straight lines and brutish, hers is artfully curved, feminine, softer. Both seem uncharacteristic and out of place, but to be fair any headstone with Charles' name on it would seem out of place. Any headstone with such a short time bracket on it is a stark reminder that life can end suddenly, unexpectedly and unfairly. There are fresh flowers on his grave, one of those with lots of small flowers that go from sky blue to a faint purple, he forgets the name. There is also a sad looking teddy bear hugging a heart, sodden from the constant Seattle weather, and he can almost feel Charles rolling his eyes at the unmanliness of the gesture. Reed's grave is less populated, presumably due to her parents living further away, but April immediately clears away a dead bunch of roses and plants a white version of the same flower that is planted on Charles' grave. When she is done they sit down on a bench a couple of rows back, ignoring the steady whip of rain on their faces. Her hand finds his and he was never a fan of handholding until their hands kept finding one another, but the way theirs meet is never about possessiveness, but about maintaining contact, about their wordless agreement that neither wants the other to go.

The thing about PTSD as opposed to general anxiety is that you're not constantly worrying about worst case scenarios and all the bad things that might one day happen to you. The worst has already happened, your deepest fears became a reality and you spend your days processing what happened and reliving the trauma again and again. He was trapped in an OR, operating with another resident on his attending, gun pointed at his head, fully loaded, finger on the trigger. He can still feel the cold grip on his stomach, the metallic taste in his mouth as his teeth dug into the walls of his mouth, the sweat beading on his brow, he can still feel everything he felt that day every time something triggers the memories in him. He can still feel his wordless shock when he learned of Reed's fate, his bottomless grief when he went to ID Charles' body, his heart breaking for April when she told him of her ordeal between inconsolable sobs. He squeezes the small hand in his a little harder as they sit in silent reflection of their individual and their mutual losses. She keeps her head held high, but the rain can't cover up the fat tears that roll down her cheeks.

"I'm terrified of forgetting her," she says after a while, voice unsteady but her eyes firmly fixed on the headstone to their right. "I'm scared I'll forget her voice, the colour of her eyes, her smile."

His throat closes up, tears burning the back of his eyes and he has to swallow hard and look away for a moment.

"It doesn't matter what colour her eyes were or how her voice sounded," he finally manages. "She was your best friend, she was ripped away from you in the most horrifying way possible. You have enough scars to remind you of her forever."

They sit together in silent contemplation, measuring the potency of memories that will fade but never go away completely. The pain from an old wound can sometimes linger in the mind far beyond the physical hurt, he sees it all the time at work. A spasm in a muscle that has had to work around a damaged nerve for far to long is not dissimilar to a twinge in your heart as you long for a place or a time you want to return to. They will never get Charles and Reed back, those lives are lost forever. Their own lives are also lost forever, their lives as they knew them. They are forever changed, they will never be quite as they were before that day. Their lives, their existence, their fates sealed by the devastations of a lone gunman.

The impossible questions he's been asking himself doesn't get any easier to answer with time. He still can't say why two parts of their foursome bore the brunt of the crazed attack, why Charles and Reed are in the ground before them and not Jackson and April. He can't explain why events stacked up as they did so that his best friend bled out whilst surrounded by medical equipment and top class surgeons, why he could have a gun pointed at him but not have a bullet in him, why he escaped unscathed. He doesn't know how the worst time of this life has put him directly in the path of what may prove to be the best thing that has ever happened to him. The answer to impossible questions is to never ask them in the first place. The answer to undeserved and self-imposed guilt is to forgive yourself for the things you cannot help. The answer to crippling hurt, pain and darkness is to embrace the privilege of being alive, to be able to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to chase after a future. The answer is to put one foot in front of the other and see where the journey will take you, to not look back until you can finally turn around and say with relief that you made it.

* * *

He puts one foot in front of the other and one arm around her shoulder as they make their way back down the hill and towards the shelter of his car. Despite everything he's glad she persuaded him to spend a rare day off together doing this. She said it would be cathartic and she was right, he does feel lighter, almost light-headed. She said he would feel better and she was right, she sees right through his attempts at suppressing his feelings, she makes it ok for him to feel. She said it would give him some perspective and she was right, he's lost his best friend but also found another, one that is seemingly always right, one that knows him better than he knows himself. This is what he puts one foot in front of the other for, this friendship or this more-than-friendship, this thing that propels him forward, that stops him from looking back. This journey with her feels like it's just beginning, this is what's got him feeling, not because of anything, but in spite of everything.

First she made him feel, but now she is making him fall, even though he's never fallen before, even though he has no idea how to fall. He never believed in soul mates or love at first sight. He never believed there was just one perfect person out there for him, or that one glance could make him give his heart away, that would be such a stupid system. But now he is beginning to suspect that he has loved her this whole time, that he has loved her smile since the first time he saw it, that the second he saw her eyes he loved them, that from the first time they met he has belonged to her completely. Now he is starting to believe that he is lucky enough to have met that one person who is exactly right for him, not because she is perfect or because he is, but because their combined flaws are arranged in such a way that the pieces fit together perfectly. She is his person and he is hers, and it's becoming imperative to tell her.

As he turns his car out of the cemetery, he suddenly can't wait anymore. After weeks of trying to find the right words or the right moment, he decides that he should tell her whilst battling rush hour traffic, when he can't look at her, when her eyes are still red from crying. He still hasn't found the right words so he eases into it.

"I dreamt of you last night," he starts, which is not what he wanted to say, but it's what came out.

"Yeah?" He can see her turning towards him through the corner of his eye, he can hear a slight smile in her voice.

"I don't remember any of it." This is not going well, the words are flowing from his mouth, but they don't seem to be the right ones. "But I know you were there."

She doesn't respond, but to be fair there isn't much to respond to.

"The thing is...," he continues, arranging his voice in more serious tones to make her understand that he is making a point here. "The thing is, I always want you there. I want you, I want us."

She still doesn't respond, and now he's really beginning to regret the decision to do this whilst driving, he is literally too afraid to look at her right now, not just because in doing so he might accidentally kill them both.

"I want you any way I can get you," he presses on, because he has to, there is no other option. "Not because you are gorgeous, or brilliant, or kind or adorable, though lord knows you're every one of those things. I want you because there is no one else like you and I don't ever want to go a day without seeing you."

She inhales sharply, almost like a reverse sob, letting him know that she is hanging on to every word.

"I want the whole damn thing, April." He steals a quick glance at her, noticing her big, wet eyes, her slightly open mouth, her expression of complete surprise.

"April, I-i...," he falters, cursing the gods of irony that this is the moment where his verbal diarrhea is finally over.

"I know," she interrupts, before he has a chance to push out the final two words.

Her hand finds his on top of the gear stick, making yet another wordless agreement. Truth is you don't always have to tell someone you love them. You just have to give them no reason to doubt it.


End file.
